A Kwakiutl Village and School (Case Studies in Education and Culture)

This is an ethnography, selective in its focus and rich in its depth, of a contemporary North American Indian village on a small island and its school. A small group of Kwakiutl Indians, whose grandparents shared the aboriginal culture of the Northwest Coast in its most spectacular form, are the subjects of the case study. The ethnographer here is the teacher, and it is his school that he is describing. The study is unique in its detailed description of the social environment from which the school draws its pupils and the interaction of these pupils with the teacher and the learning tasks set by him and the curriculum. By virtue of their separate origins the school and the village are separate entities, yet the intimate dependency of the educational activity upon the environment the village provides is apparent. The picture that emerges is at once tragic and hopeful. The frustrations issuing from miscommunications inherent in cultural differences are numerous and intense. Even more dramatic are those failures that issue from cultural disintegration. This Kwakiutl village has lost its coherent traditional culture, though many of its parts remain in force and, for reasons that become clear as this case study proceeds,, has not acquired an integrated version of Canadian-American culture. The teacher and his school cannot reverse the process of disintegration; nevertheless, the people see education as the way to improve the lot of their children. Though unique in many ways, Blackfish Village and its school are representative of schools and their environments everywhere... Harry Wolcott's "A Kwakiutl Village and School" is an entry in the Case Studies in Education and Culture series, which offers a particular emphasis on cross-culturalism.